Breaking ball
Slip Pitch
When you hear an old-timer talk about Paul Richards's "slip pitch," he's talking about a slider — Richards just had his own name for the breaking ball he used to bring tired veteran arms back to life. Same family as a slider; different decade, different branding.
The grip
Held and thrown like a slider with off-center finger pressure on the seams, which is the only specific the historical record offers — the detailed grip was never documented in a primary source.
No primary grip diagram survives. Contemporary accounts describe it only as Richards's branded slider; the seam-pressure detail is reputable inference, not a documented teaching cue, so it is tagged secondhand and approximate.
What it does
A softer slider with lateral, glove-side break that read like a breaking ball arriving late, which is how Richards used it to revive veteran arms — but no tracked break or spin figure exists for it.
The pitch was thrown in the 1950s, decades before radar or Statcast, so any spin-axis or break number would be fabricated. The Baltimore Sun retrospective characterizes it only as a slider Richards renamed; movement description here is paraphrase of that characterization.
What it really is
The slip pitch is not a distinct pitch type but Paul Richards's mid-century coaching name for a slider — the Baltimore Sun describes it directly as "a slider he called a 'slip pitch.'" It resolves to the existing slider entry; this entry exists to file the historical alias honestly rather than erase it.
Who throws itPaul Richards (the coach who named and taught it, as White Sox and Orioles manager); veteran pitchers he reclaimed by teaching it. Bob Shaw is attributed to Richards's instruction in pitch lore, but no source reviewed here documents Shaw throwing a "slip pitch" by name — treat that link as unverified.
Study this first
Paul Richards's slip pitch was a slider he renamed. The filed Slider is the pitch underneath the branding; this entry just keeps the historical alias on the board instead of erasing it.
Basic file
This pitch has a sourced one-line grip and movement and an honest explanation, not yet a filed specimen with authored grip geometry and a full craft chapter. A fuller breakdown is coming. Sourced, not corrected.
Others in the breaking ball